Libraries In The 21st Century

What is the library of the future?

As technology advances in a way that moves us away from the physical world, and further into a digital existence, brings up the question of what will happen to the staples of culture. More importantly, what will happen to books?

People are still trying to work out how we’re going to be reading in the future (the Kindle, the Sony Reader, Apple Apps, the list goes on) but this kind of thought seems to make the existence of a physical book unlikely as time progresses. I wonder what will happen to libraries.

If books are going to be available online, why do you need a building in every municipality to house them? Does the end of books mean the end of libraries? What is the future  of librarians?

In the UK, according to culture minister, Margaret Hodge, (in this article in the Guardian) libraries should be taking measures to maintain their relevance in the community. Her suggestions appear to be kind of drastic.

These contraversial suggestions included partnerships with coffee franchises, like Starbucks, advertising tie-ins in connection with Amazon, putting library branches into shopping centres and offering loyalty cards and prizes for avid borrowers.

Although these suggestions, to me, seem kind of outrageous, it’s true that libraries need to find new ways to adapt to the so-called ‘Google generation’. I, however, think that this generation would be better served with better online access to libraries and longer opening hours.

Will libraries make the cut? Or will they be soon listed as an endangered species?

Like everything else in our rapidly changing community, only time will tell.

The Kindle Comes A-Knocking

The Amazon Kindle was released in the US in 2007 as a way for consumers to read e-books, as well as other digital content.

The Kindle, soon to be available internationally

Network issues were cited as the main reason that the Kindle was not available in Australia, but this month Amazon announced a new Kindle model that would be available to work internationally.

This means that Australians can now download Amazon e-books onto these wireless devices. Being Australian, however, still seems to be somewhat of a disadvantage because they’re going to be paying up to 40% more for the reading material (according to this report from the SMH) and, although the Kindle allows subscriptions to affiliated newspapers and magazines, none of their affiliations are with Australian publications.

Making the product available internationally is presumably an attempt to boost the sales of digital literature (because it turns out that even the frenzy generated by a new Dan Brown novel won’t break the 5% limit on e-book sales). Except, Amazon still remains a snob in terms of the Kindle, releasing the device to Australia and Fiji, but not New Zealand (as remarked here in the National Business Review).

Amazon is an American company, although there is a UK based branch, there’s nothing to cater exclusively to Australians. The Kindle is bound so tightly to Amazon that anything you do with, or purchase for your new e-reader will be done the long way, via the US.

I, personally, wouldn’t want to get this kind of reader until an Australian based company (or franchise) is available to adequately service its Australian customers. Although, I may be wrong. The Kindle might just well be on the verge of revolutionising the literary world.

Pooh Picks Up Where He Left Off

Winnie-the-Pooh is a childhood staple.

This article in the UK Telegraph talks about the return of the bear along with a new character and a whole lot of publicity.

A A Milne’s classic bear-of-very-little-brain was left behind by Christopher Robin in the Hundred Acre Wood at the end of House at Pooh Corner, and since this was written in 1928, I have a feeling that readers were content to leave it there.

The Original Pooh Bear

The Pooh Properties Trust has finally managed to create a sequel, which was released internationally on October 5. Return to Hundred Acre Wood by David Benedictus isn’t another example of the tacky Disney recreation of the bear, but rather goes back to basics and attempts to recapture the look, feel and elegance of the original books.

If the book is to remain the same, despite a century of change that has happened since the twenties, what is the point of having a sequel at all? I could probably understand this more readily if the audience of the books was intended to be the children of the children that read them in their first incarnation, but surely the babes of 1928 are long gone by now. If the old books worked well enough for the past few generations, what’s the point in bringing in something new now?

It does, to me, seem to be laziness, rather than innovation. Winnie-the-Pooh might be growing up, but what kind of demographic is going to appreciate it?

The character of the honey-loving bear is iconic, but is he important enough to be brought into the 21st Century? And, if he is, why is the book pretending that it’s still 1928?

I guess, overall, I just wonder why people can’t let go of the past. You’re supposed to learn from the past, not just repeat it.

Sexy Sarah’s Story Gets Pushed Forward

Sarah Palin was always an amusing politician to keep your eye on.

Even without Tina Fey’s award-winning portrayal of her on Saturday Night Live, she managed to make a spectacle of herself with a pregnant, teenaged daughter, an inability to name which magazines and newspapers she reads, and by just being herself, the pitbull with lipstick.

Sarah "Sexy Sarah" Palin

Now, half a year before it’s scheduled release, the publishers of Going Rogue: An American Life will go on sale mid-November in the US an article from the LA Times has announced.

The deal for this 400-page book was created between Palin and HarperCollins in May this year, shortly before the former governor announced her resignation from the Alaskan government in July. Where do you suppose Palin found the time?

Do the people really need to know about Palin’s life? Stay tuned, anyway, because there are sure to be juicy tidbits released into the media in the next 50 days. That’s a lot of publicity to fit in a short space of time.

Global Financial Chick Lit Crisis

I guess it’s time for the Sex-and-the-City-style girls to reign in their spending, even in fiction. With less books being published in the traditional chick lit style, are readers no longer interested in the lifestyles of credit-card wielding shopaholics?

Too Much Credit

Chick lit is traditionally defined as a genre that features single, working women in their 20s and 30s who find themselves immersed in a culture of fashion, romance and self-actualization (even if it’s more Oprah that Jung). In a world that’s suddenly faced with an economic crisis, it seems that even fictional consumers are feeling the crunch.

An article from the Independent suggests that the current economic climate definitely marks the end of these big-spending heroines. I wonder, however, whether or not reality is really to blame.

I question if the end of chick lit is really in the hands of a global economic crisis, or rather just because the whole thing is getting a bit boring now. The Sex and the City girls are getting a bit too old to play their thirty-something alter egos (despite the fact that they’re currently filming a second feature film), and maybe, just maybe, readers are getting a little bit too savvy to enjoy the same cookie-cutter bimbos that we’re being encouraged to read about.

Prize Publicity

The Scotiabank Giller Prize is a prestigious book award given to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection of a particular year.

Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported last week that author Alice Munro withdrew her latest book from contention for the prize.

The 78-year-old writer’s publisher says that her decision was based on the fact that Munro had already won the title twice and that she wanted to give younger writers a chance for recognition.

Altogether this appears to be a fairly noble withdrawal, but based on past results it can be assumed that by discounting Too Much Happiness, Monro’s short story collection, the outcome of the judgment will be skewed.

Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro from Random House

The competition for the 2009 Prize was expected to feature a face-off between Munro and Margaret Atwood’s latest novel, The Year of the Flood, although nominations are not official yet.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

I just wonder whether a competition like this is worth winning when you know you’re not competing with the best. If Atwood is triumphant, would this not be a hollow victory knowing that her strongest competitor was not considered? Not to forget the fact that Munro is in no way guaranteed a win.

Munro’s publisher also said that despite the masses of publicity that even a nomination for this prize would draw, the author was adamant that her latest publication should not be considered. I know that most of the literary world is considering this to be a noble move, and call me slightly cynical but, with the way that the story of her pre-emptive withdrawal has spread throughout the world, I’m not convinced.

To me, it looks like pretty effective publicity.

Book to Film to Best Seller

I’ve always been more a fan of reading a book than seeing a film that is (often loosely) based on one. It’s kind of sad to read books that are so obviously created to be adapted into film scripts later on, but as the latest round of films based on books are being released in Australia, it’s not hard to see why.

The Time Traveler’s Wife, My Sister’s Keeper and Twilight were released in 2003, 2004 and 2005 respectively. Already this year, each of these books has found a place at number 1 on the USA Today Best-Selling Books list. I think that this is a pretty basic example of convergence in the media industry, and I’m not really surprised that the excessive advertising generated when a book hits the silver screen would encourage greater book sales.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Another notable example came from the release of the film Julie & Julia in America. This was the first film based on a blog-turned-book, but it wasn’t the book that ended up being a bestseller. It was the Julia Child’s cook book that had a resurgence in sales. Hopefully, author of the book Julie & Julia Julie Powell won’t be too upset. The Huffington Post had an interesting article about this.

I’m not writing this to make a judgement on the fact that authors sell the rights to their creations to other people who then turn them into film. I’m not sure, however, whether or not I think that this expectation of any good book becoming a film is a positive one.

Are we going to see books being dumbed down so that movie studios are more receptive? Or are we going to see a generation of people who won’t read the books because the film is coming soon.

My question, I suppose, is really whether or not the book industry can survive by itself anymore. Does the world need a film to encourage readers to pick up a book?

Textbooks That Won’t Break The Bank

Textbooks are inevitably the bane of a university student’s bank balance.

Although I am currently an Arts student, I did have a brief experience of a more academic route when I went to Sydney University for a year of Science. I had five classes a semester – each needing a shiny, heavy and expensive textbook.

Basically, over the course of the year, I had to buy two Biology textbooks ($147.95 + $167.95), a Psychology textbook ($124.95), two Chemistry textbooks ($149.95 + $127.35) and two Maths textbooks ($134.95 + $50). [All of these were from the Co-Op Bookshop].

Within a week of starting at university, I had forked out $903.10.

Surely, this is enough to get through an undergraduate degree.

It was a bit of a shock, that really only got worse when I dropped out and tried to sell them to someone else. In the one year since they’d been published, they had all become outdated.

The New York Times wrote an interesting article about a new way in which students are getting their academic fixes without living on a diet of instant noodles, and whatever they could steal from their parents’ fridge. At 40 to 70 percent of the recommended sale price of a textbook, students can lease copies that provide the basis of their precious education.

Cengage Learning is the most notable example. After already having individual chapters up for sale, they’re now providing hard copies for rent, with the first chapter made available electronically until the physical words arrive in the mail. This sort of system has the ability to benefit both parties – the students are given access to essential course material, and the book sellers are making money from the book more than once (if it is sold second hand, they won’t collect a profit).

This system also takes the pressure off students trying to survive on very little income as they get their tertiary education.

The HECS-HELP scheme was introduced in 1983, because the then-government wanted to make sure that not having money would not stop people getting an education. It stipulates that Universities can’t charge extra money for essential course materials.

Of course, there are loopholes.

Textbooks can be provided in libraries in very insufficient numbers (such as just one textbook to cater for hundreds of students), or can be listed by the university as ‘recommended’ not ‘essential’.

I think that a rental scheme is a great way to ensure that people are able to get the most out of their educations. Tertiary education is supposed to be available to people who have the intelligence to succeed, not the funds to back them up.

Fingers crossed, and here’s hoping that it manages to make it to Australia.

[Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/crush_images/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Judging Books By Their Covers

I love going into book stores, but when I don’t know what I’m looking for I do start to get overwhelmed by the masses of books available. This means, I must admit, that I often find myself judging a book by its cover.
Of course, covers are there to be judged, but I like to think that I’m not just buying what PR departments are telling me to buy, because really, what I’m after is a book that I’m going to enjoy.

But does a book cover really tell you what’s in a book?

October will see the release of Liar, a young adult novel from Justine Larbalestier. The narrator is a young girl who is quite plainly black. This in no way presents a problem to a reader until you try and judge the book by its proprosed cover.

From Bloomsbury Children's Books, the original 'white' cover

A very white girl on the cover of a book about an angsty African-American is slightly misleading, wouldn’t you say?

This, however, provides a very nice example of the power of the Internet. This story appeared on Boingboing last month, and Bloomsbury was forced to take notice. Thankfully.

Justine Larbalestier, herself, took a stand on her personal blog as she attempted to answer the question of the disreprancy between Micah’s descriptions of herself and the cover photo. She is clearly upset by the fact that there is a “notion that “black books” don’t sell” and openly laments the fact that authors have little input into the image that sells their work.

Bloomsbury Children’s Books have just revealed a new, more appropriate cover.

From Bloomsbury Children's Books, the revised 'black' cover

Does this really do a better job of reflecting the contents? Does a model truly capture the image of an adolescent in turmoil?

I think that this whole saga teaches us not only that we need to be more aware of what we consume, but also that we continually need to be held accountable for choices. So far, the Internet is proving to speed this process up.

Interestingly, this issue won’t be a big deal in Australia. Look at the cover recently revealed by Allen & Unwin.

A & U Children, the Australian cover

It doesn’t enter the debate because it doesn’t overwrite the possiblities created within the novel. Justine Larbalestier has said that this is the kind of cover that she wanted for her young adult novel in the first place.

The reason that the book covers are different in America and Australia is because each continent has a different publisher for the books. The market in America was seen to be one more easily persuaded into a sale by a white cover model. The Australian publishers felt that their market would be better suited to no cover model at all.
The author did not have any say in the resulting covers, which is where the controversy originated.

Maybe next time I’m browsing through books, I’ll be thinking twice.

Their Characters, Your Way

The works of Jane Austen are some of the best loved works of literature in the Western world, and apparently some readers find it a bit hard to let go.

One such reader was Seth Grahame-Smith who took his love for Regency romance and combined it with the timeless elegance of the undead. The result was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I actually read this one.
Some bits were quite well written – just as they had been since the 19th century.

From Quirk Classics at Irreference.com

With success to be found in zombies, Quirk Classics are releasing a second book by giving Austen another co-author, this time Sense and Sensibilty and Seamonsters.

Although these two books are more parodies of the classics than anything, they still provide an insight into the world of fan fiction. The imagined adventures from some (slightly obsessed) readers are sometimes published in a physical sense, but most are confined to the nooks and crannies of the internet. It does make me wonder, however, how copyright laws see these tributes.

Austen has clearly been dead for longer than the 70 years required for her works to enter the public domain.
More contemporary authors, however, like JK Rowling, have had their works re-imagined by enthusiastic fans in a more legally ambiguous way. The Harry Potter universe is actually one of the biggest examples of online fan literature (here, for example, and here and here).

When a piece of work is still under copyright (meaning in Australia that the author has not been dead for more than 70 years) it means that it really shouldn’t be reproduced, published or communicated online. But what about the characters from the work?

While JK Rowling reportedly finds herself flattered by extended adventures of Potter and his pals, she does insist that any fan fiction be non-commercial and free of pornographic content.

Anne Rice, author of The Vampire Chronicles, on the other hand, insists that fans don’t base their writings on hers. Since imitation, and fan fiction, are often just sincere forms of flattery Rice fans do not publish their works online in accordance with her wishes.

This whole grey area does beg the question of where the line should be drawn. If public figures are opening themselves up for comment and reproduction, why not literary characters? Should an author really be able to definitively decide how their creations are used?